


Five times they were just goddamned song lyrics; Nile is disgusted.

by snarkasaurus



Series: The Old Guard Is a Polycule [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Drinking, F/F, Family Member Death, Gen, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, M/M, Nile Freeman is So Done, Polyamory, Songfic, andy retains immortality, booker's early return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkasaurus/pseuds/snarkasaurus
Summary: Nile's noticed that sometimes, the lyrics of songs seem weirdly appropriate for her new life.- or -a five-times-meets-songfic
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Series: The Old Guard Is a Polycule [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2203599
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44
Collections: Old Guard Server Exchange





	Five times they were just goddamned song lyrics; Nile is disgusted.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/gifts).



> I didn't mean to write songfic, and I _really_ didn't mean to make a playlist, but here we are. The first 5 match the fic. The 6th is the "alternate ending" that fought me and will be posted as a "series" closer after reveals. The rest are songs that make me think of at least one of them. 
> 
> [Happy Together: A TOG Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3uM4JQKbv6tqhTI5psYEgi?si=QbWuDJGmR96ESjBwg5-gKw)
> 
> Roga, I wrestled with this fic so much, so I hope it's what you wanted! I have no idea why they wanted FIVE TIMES and SONG FIC, but that's what sparked, and...this is what happened. I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> The biggest thank you to Velocity_Owl_87 who helped me so much! Thank you! :D

So like. She loves them all. Once she got everyone to stop being absolute god damned _idiots_ about everything—seriously, she tracked down a group therapist, individual therapists, and argued with Copley about their necessity, but she would be goddamned if she was going to deal with such damaged people for the next several segments of forever—things went better. But it took _for-fucking-ever._ The fact that Andy was _not_ actually mortal, that it had just taken far longer than any of them were comfortable with for her healing to kick in, seemed like absolutely nothing in the face of the rest of the shit they had to deal with.

It didn’t help that Quynh and Booker showed up less than 12 months after his “banishment.” They had a good reason—someone was hunting them, and they needed help—but it was a whole can of worms that Nile was absolutely not prepared for. 

She will probably never forget having to stand on the kitchen table and let out her loudest, most piercing whistle to cut through the ear-injuring decibels of shouting, and then glaring down at the five faces glaring up at her. “I don’t give a flying fuck who did what,” she snarled. “My life was in danger, too, and I’ve forgiven him because _you all fucking drove him to it_. Yes, you, too, Yusuf Al-Kaysani, don’t _even_ fucking start with me. You are all going to sit down and shut the _fuck_ up, we are going to figure out who is after you, Booker and Quynh, and then everyone in this _god damned room_ is going to therapy, and I will not hear one fucking word against it.” 

It takes her five years to get them all through the shit with Booker. She takes a personal, alone, no, god damn it, _alone_ , leave me alone, wander across the globe for a year after that, and lets them all get reacquainted with each other. She needs to be _by herself_ and needs to deal with some things that they make it very hard to process. 

But then she does and she feels _much_ better and ready to deal with all of them and their...them-ness. 

What she isn’t prepared for is to find herself living inside a jukebox or for falling in (friendly) love with every last one of them. 

Fuckers.

_**“Reaching Out to You” - Snow Patrol** _

_All of those nights before this  
They're not like nights ahead  
It's like there's space between us  
Of things that won't need said  
Words like, "God, I miss you"  
For I'm still reaching out to you  
Through these deranged horizons  
The things we always knew_

One of the hardest things to watch at the very beginning was Andy and Quynh dancing around each other. Andy had _broken_ when Quynh walked in the front door. Just crumpled to her knees, curling inward on herself. She’d just trembled, staring at Quynh. Tears had streamed silently down her face, and Nile found that _silence_ the hardest thing to watch. Joe had had to pick Andy up and carry her to the couch because Andy just didn’t have the strength.

There were fights. So many fights. Some fury on Quynh’s part because it turned out that when you drowned regularly for 500 years, it fucked up your brain a bit and you had some seriously misplaced anger—Booker and Nile came in for their share of Quynh’s fury, even though they hadn’t even been alive for her imprisonment or (most of) her confinement—and trauma to deal with. 

Andy had her own guilt about it. The fight when Andy admitted to stopping her search was...Nile had never vomited from hearing other people argue before, and she doesn’t particularly care to repeat the experience. 

By the time they’d gotten everyone through all of that stuff, Nile was already exhausted. And then they had to watch Andy and Quynh dance. Which was hilarious on some levels. They both clearly wanted to sink back into each other, to have the relationship they’d had before. They were also both just as clearly terrified to do so. So they danced. And tried and danced away. And poked each other, and it was just… 

Nile had a headache. A constant low-level headache. Which she didn’t think was possible, so she knew it was all psychosomatic, but _fuck_.

And now, as she sits in a recliner, curled up around a throw pillow, she watches Andy stretched out on the couch, head in Quynh’s lap while Quynh stroked gentle fingers through Andy’s hair. There’s a beauty in this simple still moment, the way there is with the way the boys are all sprawled out, too, but honestly, Nile’s just really glad that Andy and Quynh are moving in the right direction. They’re still dancing, and will probably dance for years, but they’re moving in the right direction, settling, forgiving, and doing the right things. 

Nile’s learning that while the breadth of time stretches out before her, it’s easy to lose track of perspective. She already hadn’t noticed that a decade had passed since Quynh (and Booker) came back to them. Another had passed while this current dance happened. And honestly, it was fine? But it made Nile wonder what else she was going to lose perspective on.

**_“Ozone” - New Politics _ ****__**

**  
_  
_  
****_ _ **  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**__**__** _ _ **

_I've been dreaming 'bout you in my bed now  
A thousand days have passed since I've slept now  
Waiting for the day that you rescue me, I'm always on the run  
Can you meet me in the ozone?  
Hey now a thousand years have passed since it's rained now  
Waiting for the day that you rescue me, I'm always on the run  
Can you meet me in the ozone?_

The second hardest thing is to watch Booker, Nicky, and Joe dance around each other. That one is _complicated_ , and Nile appreciates Andy and Quynh’s help understanding as much of the history as possible—though Quynh listens as avidly to the Booker sections as Nile does—and they all speculate on how long this dance will take.

She helps where she can. At first, she is the _only_ one doing so, mostly because in this, she understands far better how the world works. She gets the therapists going, she takes everyone to their appointments—seriously, she feels like their mother—she makes sure they do what they’re supposed to do. She doesn’t even care if anyone winds up in anyone else’s bed, even if the tension between Booker and Nicky and Joe is so thick that it would take a damned diamond-edged hacksaw to get through if it were physical. 

But then she gets fucking invested. Booker opens up to her; she’s not sure why, but she’ll take it since he clearly needs someone. Confesses how long he’s loved them, wanted them, and how long he’s felt like that could never happen. And as he’s telling her about the American Civil War and how the three of them had wound up at Camp Sumter (she’d needed to be reminded that it was also called Andersonville, and she’d felt sick when she made the connection) and how they’d shielded him from the worst of it, the other shoe fucking drops. 

“Why?” she asked, confused. 

Booker shrugged, carefully slicing apples to set on top of the tart he was making. “Why do any of us do anything?” he asked, but he also absolutely did not look at her. “It may have been because I was still really new to everything. It had barely been fifty years when we wound up in the middle of that, and I tended to...overreact when I woke up.” 

Nile grinned at him when she noticed his ears were a bit pink. She also knew that she does the same thing, so. She didn’t mention anything about it. “So they shielded you at a prison camp? How?” 

“Take the blame for things, slip me food, put me behind them when we slept.” Booker listed out the things they did as he put the apples into place. “They did it...all the time.” 

Nile picked up her mug of coffee to hide her smile. The idiot. The absolute idiot. 

“Did you ever ask them why?” she asked, accepting the slice of apple he offers her. “Ask them why they did it or something equally intelligent?” 

“Well.” Booker slides the tray into the oven. “I did ask Nicky once. He just stared at me, muttered something in Ligurian, and stomped away.” 

Nile groaned. “ _How_ did you ask?” 

Booker stared at her. “What do you mean how? I opened up my mouth, said words.” 

“Asshole. What did you _say_? Did you ask him why they were protecting you or did you demand to know what the fuck they were doing?” 

Booker doesn’t say a word, but from the stricken look on his suddenly flaming red face, Nile had a good idea which version it was. 

“You idiot,” she sighed and took another deep drink of coffee. She needed to lower the level so she could spike it. 

And just like that, she was fucking invested in their bullshit on a level she hadn’t been, nor did she particularly want to be invested. 

She whined about it to Andy later, and Andy just laughed at her. “I am pretty sure you were invested when you bullied all of us to go to therapy,” she pointed out. 

“Shut up,” Nile muttered and knocked back the rest of the whiskey she’d poured for herself. She drank more now than she ever had in her life, and it was all their fault. 

She tried everything she could think of. She set them up for romantic dinners, and Booker walked away, thinking they were just for Nicky and Joe. She set them up for dates to see things they’d all love, and one of them would invariably bring alone Andy or Quynh. 

She eventually told those two that if they didn’t stop getting in the way—”We are trying to _help_!” Quynh protested—she would personally find the most painful way she could think of for them to die, and do it. Twice. 

In the end, the idiot boys did it themselves. Because of course they did. Joe pinned Booker against the wall and demanded to know why he was being so fucking _twitchy_ , Nicky standing right at his shoulder, glaring at Booker with an eyebrow raised. 

“Damn it, Book, fucking _talk_! Wasn’t that the point of everything? To learn how to actually say the shit that was bothering us?” Nicky snaps. “What’s. _wrong_?” 

Booker snarls. “Nothing is wrong!” 

“Bullshit!” Joe spits. 

“Nothing is _wrong_ ,” he repeats with a glare. “That’s the fucking problem. I keep waiting for something to _happen_. For someone to decide they don’t want me around, to tell me that I’ve worn out my welcome.” 

Joe and Nicky both stare at him. “You...what?” Joe asks, confused. 

Booker grimaces. “Not...like that. I know we’re good. We worked through all of that, et cetera. I mean…” He gestures kind of vaguely and helplessly. “Y’know, when we...hang out.” 

Nile groans from where she’s standing a few feet away. All three women had reacted when Joe slammed Booker into the wall, but Nile had halted them when she realized what was happening. Now she wished she were closer to the wall so she could beat her head on it. 

None of the men looked at her. “You think we don’t—” Joe starts to say and cuts himself off. “Sebastien le Livre, you are a god damned _idiot_ ,” he snarls before kissing Booker. A little violently, Nile thought, but Booker seemed into it, once he got past the shock of it happening. 

Nicky watches for a minute. “Hey,” he says. And then another minute. “ _Hey_ ,” he says, a little sharper. Joe and Booker break apart, look at him. Booker looks _terrified_ , Joe looks dazed but supremely pleased with himself. “ _Thank you,_ ” Nicky mutters. “You don’t get to hog him,” he tells Joe, and then grabs Booker’s face and kisses the ever loving daylights out of him. 

Nile does an about-face that her boot camp drill sergeant would be proud of. “Out,” she tells Andy and Quynh. “Out, immediately. Go.” She is _not_ going to be the reason these three don’t get together if they’re finally sorting their shit out. Andy opens her mouth, frowning, looking like she’s going to protest, but then her eyes flick back to the boys, which has apparently (Nile glances over her shoulder) become the three of them in each other’s arms, trading increasingly tender and yet more passionate kisses. 

“Out,” she agrees at a bare whisper, grabs Quynh’s arm, and between them, they get out the door. They all three pause, staring at the wall opposite once the door is shut behind them. 

“I’ve got a bottle of Jack,” Nile finally says. “It’s shit, but it might knock us out enough to sleep through whatever they’re going to do.” 

“Sold,” came two voices in stereo.

**_“The Best” - AWOLNATION_ **

_Me, I wanna walk a little bit taller  
Oh, me I wanna feel a little bit stronger  
Oh, me I wanna think a little bit smarter  
Said, I just wanna be the best_

Nile likes to think she’s fair-minded. As much as she rags on all of them to get their mental shit together, she takes her own advice. She saw too many friends go down because they didn't want to deal with thatto take chances— _especially_ with the prospect of eternity staring her down. So off to the therapist she went.

She’s not even going to try to count how many times she a session was devoted entirely to dealing with how god damned _inadequate_ she felt when she lined herself up next to the five of them. She knows, all right? She looks at all of them with their stupid physically perfect bodies and their incredibly skilled techniques with more weapons than she’d ever know fucking _existed_ , let alone how to use. 

So of course Nile feels inadequate. But the therapist accepts the “skilled coworker” analogy easily enough (Nile thinks Copley may have connected her with therapists that work for some covert ops groups because her therapist _never blinks_ , and she’s said some strange shit.) and offers some coping mechanisms, some ways to remind herself that she, too, is in peak physical condition, can use a terrifying number of weapons even more terrifyingly well, and she’s getting better all the time. 

She’ll give this to her weird little family: they may be the weirdest group of people she’s ever met, immortality not even fractionally considered, but they are also the most determined fuckers she’s ever met. They will _not_ let one of their own go without knowing every single way to protect themselves possible to know, including methods that Nile is positive no one else on the planet has known for at least four thousand years, probably longer. 

Nile wouldn’t trade it. But it’s terrifying. 

And because it’s terrifying, it is occasionally—though slowly, as the decades pass, less and less—overwhelming enough to make her wish she were worthy to exist near them, let alone be part of their group. So she works with it and fights it. And eventually Nile settles into something like comfort. 

But fucking _hell_ , Joe can give anyone a complex when he’s doing pull ups.

**_“Chemicals” - American Teeth_**

_We've been going hard on the chemicals  
Sleeping all day, feeling terrible  
Stay up all night, then forget it all  
If we don't die it's a miracle  
We've been going hard on the chemicals  
Sleeping all day, feeling terrible  
Stay up all night, then forget it all  
If we don't die it's a miracle  
_

So. Nile knows that while she can do things like get drunk or high, she doesn’t have to worry about any permanent harm to her body. She also knows that hangovers aren’t really a thing because that counts as damage to her body, and apparently, whatever keeps them mortal keeps them from things like hangovers, headaches, hangnails, and other weird shit.

So Nile, being the very well adjusted, borderline Millenial-Gen Z, Southside of Chicago native that she is...well. She drinks. A lot. And it’s not like she’s trying to emulate Booker—though she has a lot of fucking sympathy for him, even more than she did before—but man, at least at the beginning, drinking is the only thing that takes the god damned edge off, and as she gets older, it’s the only thing that blunts the edges. 

“Here,” Nicky says as he sits down next to her on the couch. He hands her a bottle of something brown that she has to squint at to realize it’s whiskey. “If you’re going to drink, at least drink something that tastes decent.” 

“What if my goal isn’t to taste it?” Nile asks, looking at him. 

“Then you’re drinking wrong,” Nicky tells her. “You can obliterate yourself and still enjoy the process.” He pours her a glass and one for himself, and sits back to take a drink of it. “The trick for that is to have someone with whom to drink.” 

Nile eyes him. “Are you volunteering then?” She gestures with her glass before taking a drink. It burns because whiskey burns, but it does actually taste pretty good and she’s here for it. “Bringing me the bottle, starting to talk to me, and so on.” 

Nicky nods and lays his arm across the back of the couch as he leans back and settles in. “You seemed like you needed someone.” 

She squints at his arm and then at his face. His serene little smile doesn’t change, and she takes it as the invitation she thinks he intends. She leans into him, snuggling close with a sigh. “I”m not sure what I need,” she finally amidst after enough sips from her glass to lower it by half. “My entire existence is now one extremely weird, unknowable thing that I’m struggling to make heads or tails of.” 

Nicky doesn’t answer right away. Nile appreciates that. They stare at the fire burning across from them, Nile distracted by the fact that all of them seemed to require a place with a fireplace that they could put a couch by. She wondered at the time if it came from their past and the necessity of heating with fire, but they were also just as delighted by central heat. She decided it was nostalgia and didn’t argue. 

“Your existence is now mostly outside the normal stream of time,” Nicky says quietly, gently swirling his whiskey in his glass. “You observe, even impact, but you yourself no longer fit into the flow.” 

“It may be more accurate to call us rocks in the stream of time,” Joe says from the other side of Nile. She looks at him, a little worried he’s going to make her move—she’s _comfortable_ —but Joe just smiles at her, pours himself a glass of whiskey, and gestures to the couch next to her. 

Nile relaxes and nods, and finds herself sandwiched gently between two of her favorite people. 

“Rocks? I don’t know if you’re wrong about that,” Nicky hums. “In fact, I think that’s more accurate. And we wind up worn away eventually, slipping away with the stream when it’s our time.” 

Nile makes a distressed sound, knocks back the rest of her glass, and accepts the refill that Joe offers her immediately. 

“My apologies, Nile,” Nicky says, rubbing her shoulder gently. “I know you’re struggling. That wasn’t very fair.” 

It’s partially that and partially the memory of their panic when Andy didn’t heal right away. She _had_ healed in the end, but none of them knew what had caused the delay and it was one of the reasons why they’d stepped back to recalibrate. That, and the need to train Nile, deal with the absence of Booker, and so forth. It was one of the reasons why she’d managed to get everyone into therapy, and to get Booker and Quynh settled within their family unit. Because they were a family. 

Still. 

“Unfair or not, it’s a valid thought,” Nile says quietly. “And it’s one I’ve mostly dealt with. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt sometimes, to a level I can’t...quite deal with.” 

Both men hold up their glasses to her, inviting her to clink in toast. “It does get a little easier,” Joe says after another long, quiet interval. “Uncomfortably, it’s easier because no one you knew before is left alive. But it does get easier.” 

Nile feels a single tear trickle down her cheek. “My great-niece died,” she whispers. “Reema?” 

Nicky kisses her forehead while Joe massages the back of her neck. “How old was she in the end?” Nicky asks. “I know you’ve kept track of them all. I did, too, though it wasn’t as easy, considering...the time frame.” 

That earns a weak chuckle. “She was 93. The last of my brother’s family’s kids. She had two sons, but she outlived both of them. She was the last of.” Her throat closes and Nile can’t speak anymore. 

Joe takes her glass and Nicky pulls her into his lap, inviting her to curl into him and cry. She does, letting him, and Joe, take the brunt of her grief. Reema is the last member of her family. Everyone else is gone. There’s no one else, barring some stray she doesn’t know about, and she’s alone in the world. 

So she cries. She cries for not being there, for not knowing them, for how desperately lonely she feels. She cries for all the pain family deaths have left her with, for the separation she’s felt, for the sheer, overwhelming nature of the _everything_ her life is now. 

When Nile finally slows down, the sobs gentling into occasional shudders of breath, she just...sits there in Nicky’s lap. His hand gently strokes her shoulder, keeping her cradled against his chest. She notices slowly that he’s not the only one. Her legs wound up across Joe’s lap at some point, and he’s gently stroking her from knee to ankle, over and over. Her back is warm, too, and she realizes it has to be Booker. No one else is big enough to offer that size and shape of warmth. 

She opens her eyes and sees Andy and Quynh on the floor in front of the couch, leaning heads against her thigh. As if sensing her eyes, Andy looks up at her and silently offers her a full glass again. 

“The pain never goes away,” Andy says, her voice rough. “It gets easier, but it never goes away.” 

Nile takes the glass and drinks.

**_“Happy Together” - Gerard Way (feat. Ray Toro)_ **

_I can't see me lovin' nobody but you  
For all my life  
When you're with me, baby the skies'll be blue  
For all my life  
Me and you and you and me  
No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be  
The only one for me is you, and you for me  
So happy together_

Nile’s lost count of the centuries, moving through the world with her ridiculous family, doing the work that they felt they needed to, staying hidden when they weren’t needed. She tracked her family while they still lived, and then never looked again after Reema died. Each relationship settled in and was so solid that Nile was a little envious, but none of them ever excluded her.

And now, as they lay around on a beach in...where the fuck are they? Nile squints upward at the night sky as though it’s going to remind her. Oh, right, they’re in France, southern beaches. Booker was feeling homesick, so they’d all wandered through France for a while, until they were down on the warm beaches, and then they had all just...stayed. 

And now they were sprawled out on the beach, piled together on blankets, just existing together. And Nile thinks that she’s okay with this. She’s happy with them. They...work for her. She works with them. They’re weird and they’re dysfunctional and she’s not even getting into all the weird tensions everywhere. 

But they’re her family and she loves them. Weird as it is, she loves them.


End file.
